Michael Alves's page

I love the consistent theming and sheer melodrama. Love it. I can't help but think that the Code makes it a very natural multiclass option with Champion. I'm a huge fan of Don Quixote and the many Orpheic heroes of epics like Orpheus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus

and Lemminkäinen (Finnish epic) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmink%C3%A4inen

I appreciate the gender-neutral take, so champions of love like Senua from the Senua's Sacrifice game have their place among the pantheon.

Thank you for the praise.

The original class was not gender-neutral, yet it had some specific parts that suggested that the Gallant Bard was not necessarily only for male characters. Yet it was written so many years ago, so I felt, during the conversion, that it needed some update in the way things were presented, making clear that it allowed for a greater diversity of possible characters to be Gallant Bards.

Glad you liked it.

I appreciate any and all feedback.

Michael Alves wrote:

I recommend you to look at the original Gallant Bard Kit to see how the class worked, and how I implemented it.

Thank you again.

I have many 2e books, which one was it in? I don't remember it.

The Complete Bard Handbook. =D

Well, I wish you good luck, but as you said, my personal history means I'm probably not the best person to offer you advice on this class. While I can see you are trying to create a chaste and noble hero class, too many anathema limit players options and choices. That's why I've never played a Paladin. A poor GM can beat the player over the head with all sorts of rulings like "But your class and alignment would not do that, you need to do this instead!"

I understand well your point.

On the other hand, I love playing Paladins myself, so maybe we are at different points of the specter on this case. xD

But I had seen the same happening as you said, and it is really sad when it weakens interesting development for Paladin characters.

I am sorry for it not being the kind of content that you like. I hope to bring different things in the future that are more interesting for you, so you can help me improve it.

Like I said, I had seen your content, and there are interesting things there. But as a professional game designer, I learned a long time ago that I must sometimes trace some lines of where I want to go with a developed content. I do appreciate your effort in helping me.

I have increased the pre-requisites on the Inner Confidence because while I analyzed your critiques I came in conclusion that it would be a bit to easy for a multiclass "snatch" of the feature. So your feedback did help me improve the class.

I will review again all your comments, and try to further analyze and ask for friends and fellow designers on their opinions. And I will make changes to the content if it becomes necessary, of taking it down if my conclusion is that it does not have a good stand of quality.

But so far I liked this work and how the conversion ended.

I recommend you to look at the original Gallant Bard Kit to see how the class worked, and how I implemented it.

Thank you again.

Well, lines like "Always looking for pretty company to exert its charms on" just shouts "he's an alpha-male always on the prowl for another woman to bed,

No.

It specifies that he pursue happiness without causing unhappiness to others.

"I just do whatever I want to be happy. It's not like I'm harming anyone, the women are all satisfied when I leave them.."

First, the romance can be with a woman, a man or someone that is not even part of the genre conformity, depending on the interests of the Gallant Bard the the the said person.

Second, it specifically calls that he does not want to cause unhappiness, why you assume that it is an excuse for something bad? I am not a native English speaker, so please help me in this.

I know that pickup artists are not the image you wanted to convey, and it is because of the modern world we live in that brings the image to mind. A much nicer take on it might be the John Cusack Boombox serenade in the movie "Say Anything" (there is video online if you have not seen it: Link.

Humm, I was not specifically aware of the details of this issue in particular.

But like I said I was basing myself on the original ad&d official class kit. I tried to preserve the concept and the way they created it as much as I could, but I made some changes to deal with genre issues and how our society evolved over the years.

I believe changing specific words, and clarifying what words specifically gives the wrong impressions is the best way to do this, instead of changing the concept, since doing it would defeat the pupose of an adaptation from old edition official content.

As far as your mechanics go, Romantic Appeal's "change all successes into critical successes" seems far to powerful a feat to me, even with the "If they are not attracted to you, all failures are reduced by 1 step". I'd say take both of those out and just leave the +2 bonus if they could be attracted.

Remember that this is class feats not Skill Feats.

Can you share with me examples of what you are comparing it to? As I checked and so far I see it similar to things like:

BREATH CONTROL - Skill Feat
ROBUST RECOVERY - Skill Feat
GLAD-HAND - Skill Feat
IMPECCABLE CRAFTING - Skill Feat
SHAMELESS REQUEST - Skill Feat
UNMISTAKABLE LORE - Skill Feat
(And others...)

Remember that a Class Feat worth more than a Skill Feat, so some examples are a bit weaker but that is to be expected. (Others are pretty on par with it)

Can you help me look at it from a different perspective? For now, I believe it is pretty ok, if not underpowered, since it has no combat value, and most Pf2E Class feats are combat-related. (I am respecting the original class here, but I agree that the balancing can be changed if necessary.)

For Inner Confidence, the +3 bonus on your choice of a wide range of things (attack, damage, AC or saving throws) seems too powerful for a 4th level feat. It combines Inspire Courage and Inspire Defense plus Inspire Heroics, all rolled into one with the effects of a critical success on Inspire Heroics. Since they are Bards, why not just let then take each of those focus spells if they want them?

Seems like you forgot that the status bonuses don't stack.

Also, remember that you cannot activate different compositions at the same turn that easy. And that each one would take one action, making you end without actions to actually use your bonus to attack.

Inner Confidence is SELF only, so if you use your actions on all cantrips, how will you even attack? (This ignoring that they don't stack and that you can't normally use different compositions on the same turn)

I hope you don't take my arguments here as a defense or as a lack of willingness to change things. As you can see on my Warlock class, many changes were made by the feedback of Mellored for example.

Poetic Charm also seems too powerful. Success = fall madly in love with you, Crit success = Falls so deeply in lover that they have a -3 on all further saves against your charming ability? Too much.

Again, out of combat utility. Spells at this level does similar things.

The -3 are not to all your charming abilities, just to the new saves that the target might get from THAT specific effect against you asking things the target would normally not do. But the target can gain a bonus that could go +10 or higher if what is asked is too far from what that person would feel reasonable.

You are overvaluing out of combat effects, and not reading all the nuances and details, like mitigators, specific tags, and forgetting general rules that very much reduce the power of those skills you are analyzing.

Last Words doesn't make much sense to me. I get that you are trying to let the hero have his last words, but you need to take a feat to do it, and hearing them makes everyone else Doomed 1? Why? And you are also messing with the death and dying rules to do so? The whole thing is a bad idea, IMHO.

This is one of the staple abilities of the original class.

The Doomed 1 represents the tragic nature of your poem, think about Lord Byron, but being recited by an amazing high-level bard on the moment of his death. Seems pretty dooming IMO.

No death and dying rule was messed with. There are other effects that prevents a character from gaining the Dying condition.

Can you please show/explain to me why or how it does not work with the RAW rules of the game, or how it breaks the rules? Remember the rules are there to receive exceptions from feats, there is nothing wrong with this happening if it works mechanically.

And it does not even break the rules on dying.

Read again: It is a reaction, that prevents damage that would bring you to zero, and reduce you to your level in HP. Then in 1d4 rounds you will take damage equal to your level, and if it brings you to zero, and you start dying, then before you fall unconscious and start your rolls, you, as a free action of speaking, will recite your final poem and let everyone, including yourself, doomed 1. (Which is partially a nerf to the ability, since you will go to dying 2 because of that.)

I hope all these details help you. I don't really know how to fix it without changing practically everything you created and focusing entirely on a kind of celibate purity angle. I just think creating a bard version may be the wrong way to go IMO since I would just create this character as a Scoundrel Rogue! He could be a good-hearted scoundrel, or a con-man and seducer, but that is for the targets of his seduction (and their fathers and brothers!) to find out. My grandmother (dad's mom) fell for one of these kinds of guys and he convinced her to sign her house over to him! My dad laid a trap for him, caught him when he got back to the house, and threatened him with all kinds of stuff unless he signed it back over to my grandmother again. He knew he was caught and didn't want the police getting involved, so he finally did give it back, but since then I have a very low tolerance for the "charming guy" routine.

I am very sorry for your personal history, good thing that it ended well for your family.

But remember, the Gallant Bard would NEVER do that, this is against his code of conduct, he cant act in evil ways, he cant be greedy, he can't act against pure romance.

I think you are projecting a bit here, and it is clouding your judgment. You interpreted many rules incorrectly, and I had read your posts, and I know you know best and you understand the system better than this.

I believe this is a hard topic for you, but this class DOES NOT FIT FOR A CHARMING PREDATOR, it is about a CHIVALRIC ROMANCE from medieval Chivalry Romantic Books.

I am very open to critiques and to changing my work when necessary, but in this case, I sincerely can't agree with you, and I apologize for that.

The way you want it to be changed goes against everything that is part of the original class, and all the specific parts where your critiques are clearly ignoring, as it specifically says that the Gallant Bard can't act in any of the wrong ways you are presenting here, was ignored by you.

Since it was a request from someone and not purely my choice of what to convert I will refrain from this changes now, but I will keep open to the views from you and others on the forum, and if the need arise i will do any necessary change to make it a better content.

If you have anything that is more on your style, that you want to be converted or created to PF2E, please let me know. =D

Oh, I forgot to say that I am taking requests if anyone wants to see a specific content made for PF2E. Both original or conversions.

Very interesting version of the Bard. However, it may just be me, but I somehow picture a performer that travels from city to city (like a rodeo cowboy or professional wrestler) who sleeps with adoring fans in each city he goes to. That image doesn't conjure "purity" and "innocence", unless it means he is preying on those things!

This is a conversion of the Ad&d Gallant Bard Kit.

It was a request, so not something I chose to do on my own, but it was interesting anyway.

The concept here is about a Bard that is pure romance in the sense of old chivalry romances way. (It is much more about romance, like declaring poetry at night on the window of the room that belongs to the one he/she is interested in, and winning combats in his/her honor, them it is about sleeping with people I believe.)

The Gallant is not someone that exploits people, in fact, if you read his code, he is forbidden from doing so. He protects children and defenseless people.

Most often he is a knight, wearing shining full plate armor, sword, shield, and a mounted lance. He is a performer, but a jousting performer, that acts like a "knight in shining armor".

I believe the original writers of the class had this idea taken from classic romances of knights and chivalry and were thinking about scenarios like Dragon Lance. It seems an interesting concept for a bard in this kind of worlds.

The original creators explicitly said that they were supposed to be "more pure them a paladin", as they are not bound to desire to fight evil or to the laws, only to pure romance, and protecting people in need. (I believe their idea of purity here is in the sense that they do it not for a cause, but for a pure desire to help. And the romance here is seen in the lights of old romantic books and not on the idea of luxury.)

If any part of the article gives you a different view on this class please let me know so I can fix it.

Thank you for the review of it. Any critiques on the mechanic aspects? I would be grateful to have your opinion.

[New Article] The Gallant Bard - New Muse and Feats ( Compatible with PF2E )

https://www.thegamersage.com/post/the-gallant-bard-new-muse-and-feats-pf2e- compatible

In this article, The Gamer Sage brings a new option of Muse to the Bard, and 6 new Feats for the class, all based on a conversion of the Gallant Bard Kit for ad&d.

Liked the article? Help The Gamer Sage by commenting, critiquing and sharing this article. Your support is essential so that more free content can be created.

___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ __________

Want more? More PF2E Content by The Gamer Sage:

Courtier Archetype + 7 New Social Skill Feats: https://www.thegamersage.com/post/courtier-archetype-and-7-new-social-feats -pf2e-compatible

Warlock Class - New Concept: https://www.thegamersage.com/post/warlock-class-pf2e-compatible

PF2E - Casters Vs Martials: The Sage Answer
https://www.thegamersage.com/post/pf2e-casters-vs-martials-the-sage-answer

PF2E Game Design focused Review.
Pathfinder 2E RPG: Elegant and full of choices.
https://www.thegamersage.com/post/the-gamer-sage-review-pathfinder-2e-rpg-e legant-and-full-of-choices

Crossbows are usually worse because they are taken in the light of "being an easier to use weapon" then a bow.

Historically it is somewhat correct, as the bow required much more time of training to be really efficient with it, but the basics of crossbow could be easily taught.

Because of the idea that Longbows were superior to the crossbow unities, we ended with this cultural concept that longbows are the weapon of heroes, and crossbow the weapons of guards, or sidearms for wizards.

I could study crossbows (mechanically in the system) and create some balanced content for it.
Probably a couple of general feats that can bring it to be on pair with bows, without making the crossbow ranger more powerful, and an archetype to allow crossbow to be an efficient weapon, but still trying to keep it different from the bow.

If enough people show interest I may do it in an article.

Those curses still seem off to me. Scaling both duration and effect is a bit off to me.

Scaling duration to permanent has no mechanical impact on combat. It is more flavor them anything. Not scaling would make critical feel less impactful as 99% of the time the enemy will die at the end of the combat anyway. (Or if your group is so good that they have mercy on enemies, now your curse will be a problem that you need to remove.)

Compare it to actual curse spells, and you will see that they do not have lessened effects if compared to spells of their own circle.

Also, remember that the Warlock class is more dependent on its curses them a wizard, that can chose other abilities each day.

Here is ray of enfeeblement.

Critical Success The target is unaffected.
Success The target becomes enfeebled 1. (1 minute)
Failure The target becomes enfeebled 2. (1 minute)
Critical Failure The target becomes enfeebled 3. (1 minute)

And here is blindness

Critical Success The target is unaffected.
Success The target is blinded until its next turn begins.
Failure The target is blinded for 1 minute.
Critical Failure The target is blinded permanently.

Note that Blindness has no granularity. You couldn't go "blinded 2".

Blindness is a spell that only matters if the target succeeded or not because permanency is a very low impact mechanically power-wise.
Look at Mariner's Curse and Outcast's curse for example.

Mariner's Curse
Success The target becomes sickened 1. Reducing its sickened condition to 0 ends the curse.
Failure The target becomes sickened 1 and can’t reduce its sickened condition below 1 while the curse remains. The curse can be lifted by remove curse or similar magic. Whenever the target is sickened and on the water at least a mile from shore, it is also slowed 1.
Critical Failure As failure, but the target becomes sickened 2.

The effect gets worse, and the permanency is just an "extra bonus"

If I used the same model, a simple failure would be permanent, with no reduced effect, and the critical failure would worsen the effect. I prefer to make the permanency a critical effect thing because the abilities can be used more often, and friendly-fire would be too punishing.
Because of the specificities of the Warlock as a class, having constant access to the curses, but being locked into needing to use them if you chose them at all, the presented model of curses is the best game design. But I can be wrong, surely.

Think about it this way:

- If you play a warlock and the only effect of a critical failure against your curse is the permanent effect, you will not have the rush of fun and excitement when an enemy rolls a 1, because it changes nothing in your combat.

- If there is no permanent effect, it feels less "curse-y". (Agree with you here)

- If you place the permanent effect on a failed save, like the curses we have as spells so far, any friendly fire with curses will be very harmful.

- There is no other real disadvantage of just placing it on a failed save. But it will be a little more painful to keep track for the GM, and they will feel more powerful then they are mechanically for some people, that might think the effect is "overpower" without comparing with other curses from the book.

I gave it a very long analysis before finishing the revision.
Do you still disagree? Can you point any flaw in my logic or my arguments?

I am not here trying to say that I am right or anything. I am just exposing the logic behind my decision so you can point me where you think it can be improved upon.

Again, thank you for the review Mellored. It is very much appreciated.

Revised version of the class is online!

https://www.thegamersage.com/post/warlock-class-pf2e-compatible

All the feedback received on Reddit, Facebook and here was taken into account, and I revised the Class.

I also added a Warlock Dedication Multiclass with all its necessary feats. And now the three distinct Dark Paths have some unique features, without causing them to reduce build diversity.

The class received changes both for balancing reasons and to improve the flavor of the Warlock Class.

I'd like to thank Mellored especially as some of his ideas were great to spark some changes. Some of them I used as he suggested, like permanent effect on Critical Failure at Curse Saving Throws, others I took inspiration on, like his suggestion for a new "DoT" for the class. So again, thank you Mellored. =D

Again, all feedback will be appreciated, as the class certainly can receive further fine-tuning.

Soon I will be releasing more new content. =D
(I accept suggestions on PF2E content to make.)

Revised version of the article is online!

https://www.thegamersage.com/post/courtier-archetype-and-7-new-social-feats -pf2e-compatible

All the feedback received on Reddit, Facebook and here was taken into account, and I revised the Archetype.

All feedback will be appreciated.

Soon I will be releasing more new content. =D
(I accept suggestions on PF2E content to make.)

I will be making a revision of each of the archetypes and feats on the start of next week.

If anyone has any critiques and suggestions, it would be very much appreciated, as I want to place this article on a finished, revised and ready to play status.

Thank you all. =D

IMO, all the other cantrips are too weak.

They were designed to be weak. (Not my opinion, Paizo Designer words)

Still, I agree that Electric Arc seems weak enough that it does not compete with attacks from a martial character, but strong enough that it still matters. (Thus concluding it is not OP, since it still fits the design intent of the game, and therefore is the other cantrips are weak, as you pointed.)

I would buff the other cantrips a little, instead of nerfing Electric Arc.

And well, one of the options will be the best right? Why not Electric Arc? Some optimization is interesting to have on the system. Full perfect balance is also bad design, believe it, it creates no learning curve and no cool discoveries while playing.

(This is not to say that balance is not important or desirable, just saying that meaningful choice also requires some variance of power.) (More on theory of meaningful choice here if anyone want to understand it better: https://www.thegamersage.com/post/meaningful-choices-and-space-of-possibili ty-in-board-games )

In the end, I believe we need more Cantrips that target saves and have half-damage. This would make casters from 1-5 feel less constrained.

...

Great reply!

I will start to work on a revised version by tomorrow, and in the next days, I will update the article and the post.

I agree with many of your propositions, I will run some math on this, and will take some other game design questions into consideration.

I like the idea of increasing the "Damage over Time" aspect of the class even further. But I still want to keep build diversity very open, so probably I will create a fourth path that enables you to take two feats at level one but loses the new feature that the other three paths will work around with, or something similar to that.

I just don't want it to be about 3 possible "builds". I want to have some intuitive "builds" that you can make by picking feats related to one "path" thematically, like "picking all demonic servant feats" for example, but still have the freedom to mix things and pick whatever makes more sense to build your own warlock, be that for story reasons or optimization ones, as both are engaging IMO.

About the Animal Companions, I used them as base for the mathematical worth and balance, but they have pretty different status then standard companions.

One of the big differences is that Demonic Servants are intelligent, and are very good at some skills. They can help in a more diverse number of things outside of combat.

In combat, the three different Servants have very different roles, one being a "mini-rogue", the second being a "mini-warrior", and the last one being a "mini-wizard". Each one can help fill a role but are not good enough to do it on their own. Yet it creates interesting decisions as the same warlock may play differently in different parties or in different situations if he has a Demonic Servant.

I still need to run better numbers on them to fine-tune their balance, but I believe that they deserve their own rules so that they can be really different from companions and familiars. They are much less about giving you a bonus or helping you, and much more about specialized minions that do their job when commanded.

Not that this is better or worse, just different, as I see the potential interaction between a warlock and his servants as less of a bond of trust and cooperation, and more a forceful control over demonic being with its own intellect.

If you see anything else that you want to comment please feel free, I will revise the class and post it when I am done.

Your help was very much appreciated, and with it, I will greatly improve the class.

One last thing , after all those discussions at the topic about Casters and Martials, I believe we are in dire need of guides and at last some partially optimized builds, so we can, at last, have a common ground of discussion for further things. Maybe I will give a try at writing one, but it will require that I deeply study the class. Any suggestion on one we are in more dire need of information? I am between writing a Fighter one, but I had seen a guide made by RPGBOT, or make a Barbarian one. I believe we need a baseline melee character first. Your opinion on this will also be much appreciated.

Thank you.

Thank you for the great feedback Mellored.

Let me answer some of your questions:

Does the sub-class do anything besides give you an extra feat? I like the flavors, but don't see any real difference.

The intent here was to create distinct paths that can be followed, but at the same time not lock the player into the concept, freeing it to get the abilities to build the warlock as it wants.

On the downside, some may feel that this initial option is not strongly thematically tied to the mechanics.

On the upside, mechanically it offers more build diversity for the players to try the class.

Another consequence of this design choice is that I can be sure that the player will pick at least one of the three main Feats for the class. This was important to reduce "trap builds" that can be frustrating when you offer too much choice without guidance.

So it was more of a design choice them anything else.
Maybe I should give a very small, maybe more flavor them combat-oriented advantage to each one of the three initial choices, what you think about that?

Does the profane tag do anything? Seems like Manifestation has a few uses, but is there a reason your avoiding "invocation"?

I did not want to invoke the idea that I was rebuilding 3.5 or 5e Warlock. And I wanted it to feel less "spellcaster" and more "power wielder", so I used the term Manifestation instead of Invocation.

The Profane Tag was there just to make clear that those powers were not from an Arcane, Primal, Divine or Occult source. Maybe I should make this more clear and straightforward as a rule?

I also wanted to add it so that in the future, monsters, items, and new feats could be developed to interact with the Warlock Class without needing to say "a Warlock power" or "damage caused by a Warlock", and things like that.

A monster might have resistance or vulnerability against damage from Profane sources, for example.

Flourish seems like it should be added to a number of these things. Or probably better, have include the 1/round and 1/target in the Manifestation (or invocation) definition.

You are right here, I used "Frequency" a lot, where I could have used Flourish tag. I completely forgot about this tag, thank you for this I will make the appropriate changes soon.

Any reason a why not to use the base familiar rules? Or Summon Fiend?

They work more like Druid/Ranger pet them as a familiar in combat role. That is why I did it from scratch but based it on the math for animal companions, with the appropriate changes of course.

You feel they were off somewhere?

I would remove the Curse Affinity stacking. Either put the features in the base class, or as part of the sub-class.

They are necessary to make picking more them one curse a viable path for the class.

Each target can only have one of your curses, so why would you have more them one curse? The optimal "curser" would aim to one specific curse, and ignore the others that he would not use, to instead pick other supporting feats.

That can be a choice, but I did not want it to be the only choice by being so massively better. So I added the Curse Affinity.

To work properly they need to stack so that you have a purpose to pick multiple curses.

Remember that Warlocks have no Spells and are not very weapon oriented, so they depend more on their feats them the average classes to reach the same level of power.

Do you think I should maybe nerf the affinities a bit? You believe a build getting all curses and affinities is too powerful in this current version?

I would generally structure the curses as
Critical Success: No effect.
Success: 1 round
Failed: 1 minute
Critical failed: permanent (until Remove curse / curse breaker).

I like your idea here.

But as a matter of theme, I agree with you that this would improve the class. I will work on changing this somehow soon. Thanks for the idea.

Terrifying Gaze seems like it should boost to Demoralize.

I wanted it to be independent of skill, and feel more like a mystical fear them an ability to intimidate the enemy.

But mechanically I agree that your solution would be more elegant.

Curse of Slothfulness might be too much.

Can you elaborate? I mean, by how much, or what comparison, just so I can understand how you are seeing it, enabling me to nerf it appropriately.

Profane armour seems like it should just be 3 actions. Profane Protection reduce it to 2 actions.

With three actions it will only be used pre-combat.

What you think about that?

Again, thank you for the feedback, I will be improving this class.

As anyone that has worked as game designer knows, things will not come out perfect on the first versions, and public opinion is the best to help know where we should improve on the game design of something. (PF2E itself changed a lot from beta to final version, so I am sure this class will change too before it can reach the level of fine-tuning that PF2E classes have right now.

I will wait for your considerations, and I will try to run some more simulations and play and DM with a warlock on the game this week and they make a huge balancing and improving pass on the class.

All critiques and advice will be greatly appreciated.

It's nothing, it's nice to be able to talk to the dev and help them ^^

Okay i will take everything in from the feats and send back what i feel later probably during the weekend. ^^

Edit: Also calling two friends to help me with it so probably will be a long post soon.

I am still waiting for your feedback. =D

If anyone else has any critiques or suggestions feel free to do so, as it will be very useful for me to improve the class.

Small update to it:

Fixed two small issues of the final revision.

1- Imposing Figure should had been +1 circumstance to your CA, and not -1 to enemy attacks. I changed it during the final revision for flavor but I forgot about the stacking bonus. It was too powerful as it was written before. Now it is more on par with its level.

2- The max number of extra saves against confusion effects on Motivating Words should be one, so I made it more clear.

Link

Thank you Mellored, I forgot to make use of url tag to turn it into an actual link.

If you end up giving it a look, I would greatly appreciate your feedback to improve it.

Courtier Archetype and 7 New Social Feats

Hi, i am Michael Alves, a Brazilian Game designer.

In this article, I bring a new Archetype, and seven new Feats, for characters interested in dealing with social encounters, high-society, and court intrigue.

https://www.thegamersage.com/post/courtier-archetype-and-7-new-social-feats -pf2e-compatible

The Courtier archetype is created to be usable by any class to give interesting and useful abilities related to being part of the high-society and having skills in court politics.

The design intent was that the archetype would be useful for any kind of base class that wants to delve into being a Courtier. Be it to make a Noble Knight that deals with the politics of the court, being a Fighter, or a scheming conspirator trying to win favors by underhanded tactics and honey-glazed words, being a Rogue.

The idea is that it opens many possible character ideas by adding the concept of "high society" or "court specialist". It is also useful to noble NPC's, and to create bureaucrats and diplomats.

And the seven new Skill Feats, are focused on opening more diversity to characters that want to specialize in social encounters or to just delve a bit into it.

I will be waiting for suggestions on improvements, as all critiques and feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Link to the Article:
PF2E - Casters Vs Martials: The Sage Answer
https://www.thegamersage.com/post/pf2e-casters-vs-martials-the-sage-answer

Critiques and suggestions will be appreciated.
I will update the article if the discussion here provides more accurate information in any aspect.

___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ _____________________

And if anyone is interested, I have three other articles for PF2E:

Warlock Class - Compatible with PF2E (Not based on 3.5, 4e or 5e warlock, different concept)
https://www.thegamersage.com/post/warlock-class-pf2e-compatible

PF2E - Casters Vs Martials: The Sage Answer
https://www.thegamersage.com/post/pf2e-casters-vs-martials-the-sage-answer

PF2E Game Design focused Review.
Pathfinder 2E RPG: Elegant and full of choices.
https://www.thegamersage.com/post/the-gamer-sage-review-pathfinder-2e-rpg-e legant-and-full-of-choices

puksone wrote:

I doubt that a fighter 15 uses two normal attacks....

true, but the barb would not either.

I can't do every combo of feats and items.

But I am hardly the owner if math. You can do whatever one you want.

The thing is, most of the high-level strikes are still not that far from a blank one.

People keep thinking that fighters at level 15 will have some incredible DPR increasing attack, when in fact they don't.

Most feats are situational and not simple DPR gains, and that is what people are not seen.

The biggest dpr gains I can see are from things like Certain Strike, which does some damage on a miss. Whirlwind, that is an AOE, Agile Grace + Two-Weapon Flurry, and etc...

And they don't stack, as they are mostly actions.

I am finishing a new article with a courtier archetype and some feats focused on social encounters, then I will take some time off to try to reach some optimized builds on some levels to make a better analysis.

So far, my problem with doing this is that we still have no community consensus of what are the best builds, feats or anything. So it is hard to call something optimized when we don't have anything to compare it to. But we need to start somewhere I think.

I also forgot focus spells...

Ok, so level 5
2 targets (swipe+reach for barb)
+1 to the barb to assume flat-footed half the time.
And 4 force bolts (/2 targets = 2).

(...)

So casters deal more damage if there are only 15 rounds of combat in a day (and 4 rests). And will still have level 1 spells.

Compared to 30 for higher levels... Are low-level days shorter than high-level days?

Side discovery, spell slots scale faster than weapons, focus spells scale slower than weapons (maybe?)

Good findings!

The data we have so far indicate that the damage/hp-of-average-monster is higher at low levels them at higher levels by a reasonable amount, so it is expected that low-level fights end faster.

Since they also have fewer resources to expend, I believe most often the number of encounters that can face each day is also smaller, but I have no data to back it, outside of personal experience, and an overall look at the whole system.

(It is important to know that the designers explicitly said that no metric will exist and that encounters per day should vary as to what makes sense for a given campaign. They said that they will provide estimates on the Master Handbook, but that they are not guidelines or rules.)

Did you use 2 targets for Electric Arc? (There is no *2, but you might have multipled the hit chance.)

We can try to make numbers for level 13 to see scaling. There is many spells at higher levels that cause more them 2d6/spell level, so the scaling is above linear. I believe we will see even better numbers for casters at high levels.

Yet the numbers you presented shows that they are not unviable. Even if it still possible to argue that they are not the best. (Like you pointed, you still have all level 1 spells for utility there.)

Dude, you really should learn how to handle discussions,when you want to public articles.

I am sorry for that.

I am not new to criticism, as I work as a game designer, and you learn to grow some thick skin.

I was thorn in this case, because either I just ignored people offering critiques because they were not being respectful, or I answered trying to incite them into showing what they really disliked, or if they could bring me real data that I was wrong so I could improve on my view about the game, and even maybe improve the article or write a new one.

If I ignore them, I would have no chance of gathering discordant data. But by engaging with them, I ended up being so personally attacked that I ended defending myself, which was not the right move to do and I agree.

The problem is that just accepting assaults also causes a loss of credibility for the article. I mean, if I answer, but act like I don't know what I am talking about, this testifies against me.

Yeah, not a simple case. That is why most designers do not often go to the internet to talk about their works, outside of a more controlled environment. The public tends to eat them alive.

I will try to improve on this.
I accept suggestions, but I will think clearly about how I can better talk in a forum in the future.

Thank you for the tip.

To address the actual topic:

To me casters feel fine after they reach level 7. They have enough spells, and 7 of them are generally worth using (level 1 and 2 spells just seem too weak outside of magic weapon and heal, which don't scale well). The scaling of the damage spells also makes them a lot better at this point (since they scale linearly they get better relative to weapon damage which scales more slowly, but they start off a lot worse).

Unfortunately those things aren't true at low levels, wizards and sorcerers really don't have much going for them. Damage spells aren't too good at these levels. Debuff spells are also very bad because they are balanced for higher level use being possible.

They only ones that seem worth using are color spray, magic weapon, heal, and magic missile. So you have maybe 4 of those, and other than that you just have cantrips. You really are so much worse than a fighter it's crazy. Even when you use those spells you aren't contributing more than a fighter would. And after that you're just contributing less than half the fighters expected damage with cantrips. The only saving grace is that electric arc is vastly over powered, giving them at least a decent contribution at low levels.

Clerics and bards have other things going for them, and the druids animal companion is nice at low levels, but sorcerers and wizards are very behind at very low levels.

I agree with you.

But the cantrips DPR are much more closer to martial damage at lower levels than on higher ones.

Doesn't Cantrip+Shotbow plus the use of spells make it viable?
Some spells like Burning hands can also be useful at low level, damage spells are not that weak.

Burning Hands, Magic Missles, Magic Weapon, and Shocking Grasp are all useful at level 1 and 2. (At 3+ Magic Weapon is still great)

On level 3 and 4, Flaming Sphere doing 3d6 + a Sustain of 3d6 per round seems ok too, even without the half-damage. Acid Arrow is good because at a low level your hit is not yet lower than martials. Second Circle spells feels dry at its level, I agree, but Summon Elemental is not a bad choice too, as you will summon level-2 or level-3 to fight for you. Not that bad against minions. Enlarge is not great, but increases fighter reach and gives a damage bonus.

At level 5 you have good spells, the problem is that you still have a low number of them, and depends on second circle ones too much yet. Here we have Fireball, Lightning Bolt, levitate, Slow, Haste and Wall of Wind.

And level 7 onward we agree so I can ignore those for now.

I just feel we might need 3 or 4 new spells for the second circle to improve it a bit, as it feels lacking on damage spells with save and half damage.

I am not sure if I agree with you on level 1 and 2. But I agree that level 3-4 feels weaker, but I feel that level 5 and 6 is ok, and 7+ wizard starts to be very good.

(Btw, that was a trend on PF1 too let's be honest here... I didn't like that it was like that, and you can argue that level 3 and 4 were better on bf1 comparatively, but still wizards were good on 5+, and shined on 7+, and by 9+ they were entering demigod realms.)

I feel like we need to make some optmized level 1, 3, 5 and 7 Wizard, Melee Barbarian, and Ranged Ranger, and compare their DPR by different number of encounters and rounds per encounter to better understand this.

Fun fact: the system doesn't allow that.

If the scout is stealthy, he won't see the trap. This is how exploration mode works: either you're stealthy, either you look at traps. Do you know how the rules work?

TRAP FINDER FEAT ROGUE 1

Also, do you know that you can: Avoid Notice, go ahead, see if there are enemies, go back if you find them, if a room is clear from enemies, your group comes with you, you change to Search, see if there are traps, if not, you again go to Avoid Notice and scout ahead again.

Do I really need to explain simple details like that?

This is the same for save: RAW you don't know the weak save of a creature. You can usually see what's his strong save, but not his weak save. eg: why is the weak save of a bear Ref instead of Will? Why is the weakest save of a lich fort instead of Ref? Etc. Usually, to guess the strong save is easy (bears are strong, liches are wise), but you can't guess what's the lowest one.

RAW there is no clear rule against metagaming and no punishment for doing so. Just metagame and say you choose randomly.

Don't take this argument seriously, it is just to point out how absurd your is.

All the streams from Paizo developers playing include descriptions for monsters and their actions, and all of them can be used in-game for characters to take their choices of actions.

This argument of yours just shows that you are trolling.

yes, using houserules favoring the casters [/Qupte]

No house rules used. Your argument is pointless and not relevant even for PFS or Paizo own devs playing. By your "RAW" the player can buy the monster handbook and the adventures and use all knowledge there because nothing prevents it.

Gaterie wrote:

and using a very specific wizard build as your definition of "casters" (how can a cleric prepare blast in his highest slot?)

I need to make arguments for each one of the classes now? Do some work yourself please?

Clerics their own list of spells, with their own particularities, like healing for example. Healing spells are very powerful in PF2E.

Gaterie wrote:

while discarding fighters "because they are outliers" and every martial build,

They are outliers when talking about hit chance. All the damage comparisons was against a fighter, your argument is invalid again.

Gaterie wrote:

and considering the blasts always hit every opponents,

False the entire math is for 1 or 2 targets. Again you fail.

Gaterie wrote:

Then yes: at some point, you've created enough biases and casters = martial.

In actual play, casters < martials.

Again you have only your opinion on that.

Most tables on streams are showing otherwise, that casters are really good.

The devs think casters are on good spot, and they know more about the system them both of us.

The data so far presented shows that spell casters are certainly viable.

You bring no data, no mathematical analysis, and only your rant again.

Please go away troll... I want a real useful discussion here, so we can improve the data we have and can run better calculations to better understand the system.

Quote:

he compare 2-action spell with a barbarian doing 1 actions

You do know Swipe is a two action ability, right?

I LOL'ed in real life. xD

Mellored has plenty of credit in my book, and I would be very careful to disagree with him because he usually knows what he is talking about.

People around here should try to calm a bit. This is a complex affair, and all this heat on the conversation really don't help it.

I'm trying to get the thread back on track, but people are so defensive about this discussion that they keep attacking me for doing research and placing the results I found so far in an article. They feel personally offended that I am not saying that the designers are stupid and that spell casters now suck. =X

But let's hope we can gather a group of people more inclined to help doing hard work, gathering data, making calculations, and discussing results so we can improve on this topic and on the overall theory behind PF2E system.

On the lesser effect on a success, in play it can definitely feel to some like they aren't good enough, if the rest keep getting larger values. Not sure, but it definitely could feel like a consolation prize, Ex: "at least that wasnt totally useless" vs "man that monster resisted".

Good point.

The effects of the damaging spells on failed saves are impressive enough to warrant more damage than a martial class average damage if you hit 2 or 3 targets for example. (Depending on level, items, fighter items, many factors, etc...)

For save or suck spells it depends heavily on the spell, there is some, on higher levels with pretty nasty failure effects.

On the lower level, ones it is more "I had the 30-40% chance of making the target suffer a really bad effect, but if he doesnt he still takes this debuff.". I agree that success against your slow feels way worse than a failed one, but depending on the situation it is still great.

Yet I believe this spell design serves to emphasize the higher-level effects, as a progression must be felt, and they couldn't add too broken effects to the end spells and are all consequence of the design choice of making low-level spells have the same save DC of higher-level ones.

This is what many do not take into consideration.

The game design concept for casters changed drastically partially because they made spells DC independent of spell level.

So a spell on level 1 has the same DC of your level 10 spell.

On PF1 you could have very similar or comparable debuffs on spells of different levels, and the high-level spell would still feel like a progress. Maybe they just increased range or gave it a wider area to make it more impressive, but what made you pick the new level spell was the increased Save DC.

Now they need to make spells of lower level feel lower level in comparison with higher level spells because they are as effective on DC as the higher-level ones.

On the other hand, now the low-level spells are way more useful, and those slots are not just for utility spells.

Again, game design is a short blanket, you cover one thing, you lose on the other side. You just need to look for what you bring the best game, and the guys at Paizo made their choice, they can be right or wrong, only time, and our effort on studying the system will prove if they were right or wrong.

I do agree that wizards feel less satisfying, they have little to no way to really buff their damage/accuracy through feats and this takes away build options.

If you look at other classes, damage buffing Class Feats are in fact pretty rare, it is not just a Spell Casters thing but it was a game design choice to keep numbers from increasing too much exponentially.

The fact that spellcasters damage scale by level causes the need to make them scale less on other sources. If you look at the damage progress tables, Wizards are scaling well in comparison with martials, even when they are correctly built by picking all damage increasing feats possible. (You will see that are pretty few, most are situational or actions, so you can't combo them like prior edition feats enabled most of the time.)

But I understand that some people might not feel satisfied by the new class design. This is partially because it is very different from them before for spellcasters, they changed a lot, and people are still getting around to understand how to play with them, and what to enjoy in them. Others just dislike the way the designers choose to take the game.

But this doesn't mean unbalanced. My article does not conclude that everyone should like casters, not in the lest, they changed a lot and i presented bad points for them, like lower hit chances, that even if still end up with good DRP might not be to the liking of some players as you pointed.

I am less about the numbers and math, I do think that comparing a limited resource against an all day every day resource is bad. I especially hate the if I use another action to buff to use another spell slot to buff my spell (true strike argument) is a bad argument and disengenuous, fighters can achieve almost the same through positioning. Given a second d20 roll is approximately equiv to a +4 bonus (IIRC).

Two dices double chances for 20's, and avoid 1's. It is a bit better, but not much. Fighter can gain flat-footed, but that is just a +2, not a +4. So it is far from a bad argument, math wise.

The idea is that by 5 to 7 level, your level 1 spells are mostly useless for damage, so you will use them to debuff, buff, utility or to True Strike single-target spells if you even have one of them worthy of it at all.

Else you can just shot your shortbow, it is pretty decent extra damage, similar to a Cantrip, and you are hitting at 0 penalty.

My issues with the design aspects (if we want to go to design) is that multiple rolls for one outcome. I am fine with having to roll to hit, or a saving throw but requiring 2 rolls to go your way puts a greater burden on the action to succeed. There are 2 chances for the action to be sub optimal or not full effect.

This only happens for very specific spells. And generally they compensate it for having effects more powerful them similar ones of the same circle, so I believe it is fair.

Disintegrate is a good example. It has hit and save, but with true strike, it is not hard to hit, has a double chance for 20's and even if the target save is successful it does very good damage for 3 the use of 3 rounds, compared to a martial average damage, taking into account miss chance and crit chance for them too, and with the use of proper talents by that level.

While it is nice there is some small affect on a successful save, its still a 'my ability didn't work to its 'normal' effect 45 -70% of the time, again that feels like a bad outcome (math aside). The argument is not just about the pure numbers, though I do agree that logic underpinning your math handwaives a lot of issues away.

This I can surely agree with you. As a designer, I understand that the guys at Paizo took a risk choosing this path.

Even a change of nomenclature would improve this feeling, but they needed to keep the names that are more natural to d20 players, for many other reasons.

Yet game design is a short blanket, they wanted to improve the game design of the save system, and they did it, the system of saves is technically much better but in the end, it had the effect of causing spells to fail a lot, and be balanced by effects on miss chance. They might be balanced maths, but might not feel great to play for some, or even most players. And here you have a good and solid base for an argument.

In my personal opinion, I felt it was very fun to play spellcasters, but then it is just me. I was very worried when I started to play, as I had impression since getting the books that they would maybe be a bit underpowered, but when I started to study the system, watch games, play and DM my mind changed greatly, and I would play casters over martials most of the time.

Not comparing optimal damage builds for a fighter vs the optimal damage build of a caster is bad because fighters/martials have a ton of ways to buff their damage, one of the issues right now is casters do no (in feat choices).

This is unfair because it is not true.

Btw the onus of proof is on you as you made the original assertion that they were equal.

I did, and I gave proof, taken from diverse sources.

That is how science works. You make theory based on the best data the research could give you so far. If better data arises proving it wrong, the theory falls and new theory arises about the topic.

There is no burden on the one making a claim to prove that all of his arguments are perfect, his data is unquestionable or something like that. Asking for it to accept an argument is fallacious, and I know that it is not what you are trying to do here. But please cut me some slack, the system is new, there is much to discuss an alot of data to appear. And i did not even conclude what you pointed, i said that:

"In the end, this discussion is pretty complex, and involves a lot of math variables. The system is still new, and more data crunch and more work needs to be done to better understand it’s fine details, but we can conclude with a reasonable decree of certain that Caters and Martial characters are both pretty viable[b/], [b]being more or less efficient based on specific situations and contexts like number of enemies, number of encounters per day, number of rounds per encounter, vulnerabilities that can be exploited, how hard or easy is in a given table for players to find the good or bad saves of the enemies, and many other variables"

So please don't take my article out of context. =(

I also agree that the focus for pathfinder should be levels 3 - 12 where most play actually happens. There is very little support for high level play and few campaigns. Having to grind 16 to 18 levels to get to equal numbers on my biggest abilities again is a poor play experience.

I agree with you on this, but I believe Paizo is trying to change that a little. Things were never done for a high level because it was so broken in the past that it barely worked, let's be sincere, it was more on the realm of home tables them official campaigns, and much more roleplay fun than game mechanics.

But the numbers are not that bad for casters at low level because cantrips are not that bad on lower levels, because their scaling is the real issue, and they can cantrip+shortbow for descent rounds on low levels. By mid-levels, from 5-8 casters start to depend more on spells, and this 3 levels seems to be somewhat hard, cantrips by this time are not that good anymore and they don't have that many spells for utility/buff/debuff on lower levels to have really long workdays. By level 9 onwards, things are improving well, and spell diversity is pretty good, so by your metrics we would have 2 ok levels, 4 bad levels, 4 good levels. Not amazing, but the overall experience seems to be on average with other classes, as they also have good and not so good points before they get important abilities.

The real problem with casters vs martials is not just math, its agency. Less spell slots mean less choices, means less choice for utility or harder choices in a build...

Sometimes less choice means more agency.

Agency comes from meaningful choice, and that is a choice that does not have a simple best answer, that needs to be weighted by the player, may have risks, has some uncertainty, and is not easy to make.

If you have a clear answer of what is best, then there is no choice, you just do that and you are done. This happened a lot with PF1 Spell selection, as there were spells so powerful and generalistic that others on the same circle could be totally ignored.

By having fewer slots you need to think well on what spells of utility, combat, or spells that are only useful in specific conditions you will have on your list for the day.

Having more spell lots might seem like more choice, but in fact, it is LESS choice, as you don't need to weigh the pros and cons, and your risk is mitigated.

Yes, you can have so few choices that it reduces your agency, that is true. For example, so little number of slots that you CANNOT ever avoid picking generalistic spells because you have so few slots that the risk of having a specific or utility spell on the list is far too great.

But creating meaningful choice is not simple, you need to give players both a good set of options, with good variation, some more generalistic, some more niche, others more defensive, and etc.. But you need to limit how many the player can chose if not there is no choice at all.

The problem is that people keep comparing spell casters to PF1 spell casters, when in fact the game is totally different.

The spells should not work the same, neither the number per day, or their effects.

Look at PF1 Fighter or Ranger, and look at PF2E Fighter and Ranger, they are very different. Their flavor is the same, but their mechanics are built from scratch!

Why would the spells be comparable?
But people keep comparing to what they could do in PF1 with spell casters, and that is why they feel like they are restricted and everything else.

I am not saying that people can't do that, or can't feel that PF1 had a game design that appealed more to their tastes, they can!

Pathfinder 1E was not a bad game, I run it till this day, as some of my tables games are running for a long time, and changing edition is not really possible at this point. And it is still very fun to play.

You can make critiques to PF2E design, and you should if you dislike it, but to claim that it is unbalanced you need to provide data an proof, and that is my argument here in this thread. (Ar argument that is not on the article, because it would make no sense there.)

You can disagree with the amount of choices the spellcasters have now, you can dislike how they play, but you can't claim it is unbalanced or that the game is not well designed, or that the system does not work. You can say that it is not to your preference or point how you feel about it, but to make conclusions like "there is too few options" or "the game is unbalanced" you need to provide proof. The first would require a statistical research with players to feel is they are feeling empowered and with agency, or if they are feeling a lack of agency over their characters and the combat, and the latter would require you to do mathematical proof showing that there is a correct choice, that is correct for most cases, of what classes you should play to have the most success against the average encounters of a given level.

You can provide not perfect data, make estimations, and present a theory with not a complete and perfect description of the game or the community, but you still need some data, not just 2 or 3 people personal opinions without evidence.

That is my stance on this.

Hope you understand, as I felt that your post was not an attack but your sincere opinion, and I tried my best to answer alike.

Look, I didn't like the prebuffing, nor the martial/caster disparity in pf1, and I felt that save and suck mechanics in that 1e were bad game design (since those spells were impossible to balance around without making them useless or instant win buttons), but rather than telling people to buy and read 500-700 page books to get your point, why not quote specific lessons and theories from the book so we can get a pick at what you are referring to when you mention game design. Just saying "read the books" doesn't give much weight to your argument regarding game design (and no, I'm not trying to downplay the graphs).

Again, you not contributing and are just making attacks.

I cited each and every theory, in very simple ways, because explaining them would require many pages, and they are much better explained by the books them by me.

You just discredited everything I said, so I cited the source of some of my thoughts on game design.

You need to understand that just trying to disprove others without showing any proof, any data, or contributing to further the discussion by doing work yourself to help us further and better understand the topic is useless.

Want to help the community?
Let's make optimized characters of different classes, on different levels, test the damage, make improvements on our testing and reach better results.

That is useful. The way you are acting is not.

I'm sure they are and that plus $41.40 will get you a copy of the PF2 core rulebook on Amazon.

What? o_O

But invoking them and then getting defensive about them is not really any sort of supporting for your post. It's just you bloviating. So I don't think I'll delete my post: it's deserved here.

I did not got defensive, I was making a citation of a well known and respected source of information about the topic. You know that is what science is about, for example.

Citing credible people on their field of expertise is a must on any serious discussion.

Telling people they need to go read a dry-as-dust textbook and that does invoke psychology before they can comment on your article credibly is discrediting.

You don't know the books, how can you call them dry-as-dust and how can you claim what they invoke?

And how invoking psychology does even mean something bad? It is a very important scientific field you know? A very diverse field, with many excellent and important published articles.

The way you talk here either you are anti-science, and if that is your stance, then I really don't have much more to talk with you as our very concepts about reality are so apart that we will never reach anything useful by keeping arguing with each other.

In addition, your sophistic response is inapt: nowhere did I say they specifically and explicitly argued for things like mictortransactions and the like. But the designers of the games that have such things are *game designers* "in the area." They read the "very well recognized" books too and design their games based on what they learn from such things and "academics in the area."

No, they are great guys, that do great games but are forced to make things that they disagree with because of corporate decisions coming from people up in the executive part of the business, and those guys do not understand about game design.

Please, you are offending hundreds, maybe thousands of people with what you are saying here. This is absurd!

So get off your high horse. You're really just down here at our level too. Stop being a snob.

Me a snob? You are offending hundreds of people, discrediting books you have not read before!!!

This is pure madness!

Persuasion via ad-homenem and "read these textbooks" is the tactic you and Michael have taken, I see.

adjective

Do you even know what you are talking about?
We never attacked people, only their position. I presented game design theory, he contexted it, I gave him sources of high credibility about it. There is no ad hominem.

You are using the concepts completely wrong.

Next you'll try to tell me the people who design the games that have pellet-clicking RNG aren't game designers and also don't know what they're doing.

Bad game designers exist, game designers that are willing to make bad games because they are paid for it also exists.

And there are good game designers.
Theory about game design is based on what makes good games, and not what makes money for corporations.

You don't even understand how offensive you are being right now.

We interrupt this regularly scheduled thread for an off-topic on-topic observation:

Quote:

most of the time make good game design. If you read books like Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals from Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen, or The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lens by Jesse Schell

Ahhh, so *that* explains what's been going on in the unfolding trends in gaming over the last generation or so.

Let me guess: these books use quantitative psychometrics to help game designers see what keeps people clicking for the pellet like a grandmother spending down her fortune at the slot machine.

The same design principle behind those ftp games with microtransactions and rng enhancing that gets people to plunk down time and or money trying to get the pellet. It *does* work (and none of those games are loathed or if they are it's never for any good reason, and certainly no one who plays those games have feelings of frustration that they then take out via in-game aggression in likewise carefully designed contexts).

I don't mean to knock these - I'm sure they're invaluable for game developers, from the pov of a game developer. But I'm not sure these are the sort of game design principles behind the success of the hobby Gary & Dave launched. It comes from a orthogonal perspective.

If the game was made based on the sort outlook I'm sure it will make the devs a fortune (by tabletop RPG standards).

You should read the books before saying such blatant accusatory and defamatory things about it.

Both are very well recognized both by game designers and academics in the area.

They are the exact opposite of what you said here. They talk about creating good and engaging games, about player experience, game rules, balancing, and all the encompass good game designing.

They have NOTHING supporting microtransactions, money sinks, or that would suggest causing frustration as a good thing for a game.

They are not books made for greedy corporation executives, they are books about GAME DESIGN.

Seriously, i would suggest you to delete your post, as you have NO IDEA of what you are talking about, seriously.

First, I'd like to apologize for any moment on any prior post that might have been seen as disrespectful, it is not my intent in the least.

I enjoy heated discussions, and I think we need them to improve on our theories about things.

I will answer your last post, but because of some of your answers, I will be a bit harsh at some points, please excuse me for that.

Just because the game designer said they did something on purpose doesn't make it balanced or a good thing (this is an 'appeal to authority' fallacy). The fact that they are readily available to non-casters actually makes this worse for casters as it removes the exclusivity of their main class feature (i.e., spells) and gives it to everyone. This means that spells that use a slot form an even larger part of their identity as a class chassis. This sets up having impotent spells from slots as a serious issue for the overall fun of the class.

No, it is not an appeal to authority, you are using the term incorrectly. An appeal to authority only happens when you appeal to someone that has prestige but no specialty on a given topic of expertise, and I am using the words of a very knowledgeable game designer that has the most knowledge about PF2E. Also, I used it as one of the arguments not as the proof, so again you are incorrect.

And you are distorting the argument about cantrips. I agree with you, they removed the exclusivity of cantrips as a main class feature, this left the level 1 to 10 actual SPELLS as the main class feature of spellcasting classes.

Let's be frank here, PF1E cantrips were useless too, so what you are talking about? The main core mechanic of spellcasters always was 1-9, and now 1-10 spells. Just because they gave cantrips a progression does not mean they are now important part of the kit.

If you pick unwisely your spell list, on PF1 or on PF2 you were throwing away spell slots, this is not a serious issue, it is called choice, and it must have consequences. You want to pick niche spells? You will take the risk of they not being useful that they, but generally they are pretty powerful in that specific context, and that is why often they are better picks in that context then other spells, hence why you want to maybe have them on your prepared list. This is basic of choice and designing interesting choices on game design, the contrary to what you said here.

Let’s compare a 1e wiz/sorc caster with a 26 caster stat (starting 18 + 2 race + 2 from boosts + 4 from headband) to a 2e caster equivalent then at your L11 comparison point:

1e(prep.) - 1x8, 2x8, 3x7, 4x6, 5x5, 6x4 - Total = 38 Spell slots
2e(prep.) - 1x4, 2x4, 3x4, 4x4, 5x4, 6x3 - Total = 23 Spell Slots (39% reduction in spells)
1e(spon.) - 1x8, 2x8, 3x8 ,4x8, 5x5, 6x0 - Total = 37 Spell slots
2e(spon.) - 1x4, 2x4, 3x4, 4x4, 5x3, 6x3 - Total = 23 Spell Slots (38% reduction in spells)

The statement in the article is factually wrong and your response shows your bias is readily available to explain away that I must have a homebrew broken character. The fact is that between 1e to 2e you're losing a ballpark of 25-40% of your spells at various levels.

Are you optimizing for number of slots per day?

26 of intellect gives you:
1o - +2
2o - +2
3o - +2
4o - +2
5o - +1
6o - +1
7o - +1
8o - +1
9o - +0

With this a generalist Wizard will have:
1o - 6
2o - 6
3o - 6
4o - 5
5o - 2
6o - 2

A total of 27 spells per day and not the 38 you pointed. So who is using wrong numbers here?

If you take a Specialist Wizard, just to buff spells per day, you will need to select opposed schools, which is a small nerf overall, and you will only have 33 and not 38.

This will be counting against PF2E 23 spells per day from the Wizard.

We are talking about a 30% reduction here, that I did not dismiss.
I said "It is a significant nerf with loss of 1 to 2 spells per day..."

It is a roughly 30% nerf to the number of spells per day, YES!
But on the other hand our 11 level wizard have:
4o - 5 +1 if specialized
5o - 4 +1 if specialized
6o - 2 +1 if specialized

4o - 4
5o - 4
6o - 3

A non-school specialized Wizard has fewer spells of 6o by level 11 than on PF2E.

The difference is very small on the big gun spells, and happens mostly on lower level slots, and this happened because they made lower-level spells save scale automatically, making them more useful then PF1 that would mostly be used for buff and utility because targets would not fail against them if you were not using a very save optimized build.

You made a strawman argument here since you attacked a proposition I never defended in first place. In my article, I presented all arguments in favor and against casters, so that people could reach their own conclusion, and then I presented MY conclusion, that you can agree or not, and that we can discuss.

You should take more responsibility before talking the way you did here. Even more when you will do bad math and show faulty data.

This isn't a factually based statement and universally stating that things that people used were over powered outliers belies the fact that they published a lot of extremely under-powered situationally relevant spells. That is an opinion and we fall on opposite sides of the fence. I value consistency and agency over my character's abilities. I don't want an all or nothing swingy play style or to prep an irrelevant spell. People picked spells in 1e to use because they had a good chance of being impactful and not wasting your resources. This is especially important in 2e where you have 25-40% less spells. To constantly hear that the enemy made that save because statistically that is what is going to happen due to Monster's much higher saves vs. 1e, is frustrating in play.

Purely your opinion against my opinion on this.

An article is supposed to bring both raw data and my views on the topic I am talking about. You can criticize it freely, and I can defend my points.

Show incorrect data and I will promptly fix the article.
I want to learn as much as I want to teach here.

What you are calling frustrating is what most of the time make good game design. If you read books like Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals from Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen, or The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lens by Jesse Schell, you will understand what I am talking about.

You can discuss other aspects of the spell design, but saying that you prefer a version where you could pick all the same spells every day and that everyone used mostly the same spells because they were top tier in strength, even when competing against more specific spells, and were generical, then a system where specific use spells are more powerful, and more generalistic spells are less, then you are technically wrong by all that i, and many other game designers know and theorize about interesting choices.

You can discuss about how they did it, and point other methods that could have been better on your opinion, but what you said is far from that, and is plain wrong.

What if we look at the poor L1-L5 caster where people spend the most amount of play time instead of going right to L5+ spells? You even allude to this in the article, but change your combats per day for low level play to 'make it okay' to suit the input data. You've presented an inconsistent argument with bias. The truth is losing one of your big '3' spells because a boss or minion made a save is 1/3 of your goods for the day and feels awful. What if you have 7 combats at L1-L5 in a day (that's 1 spell per combat and 3-5 rounds of cantrips excluding wanting to have any utility/out of combat spells).

Yes, I said that lower-level casters were at a bigger problem.

On extreme conditions, low-level wizards are worse? YES! The article points out that!

You are just trying to read the article on the wrong way on purpose by now.

Oh, and you forgot two important aspects:
1- The length of combat and the number of combats per day are usually lower on low level as the party has low recovering resources.

2- Cantrips are closer to the damage of the other classes in lower levels as the tables on the article shows and as the discussion here on this topic also proved. (Thanks to Citricking.)

So again your argument is just baseless attacks.

1.) Comparison is only between 'martial' and caster and does not account for fighters who are clearly above the rest in accuracy.

False the DPR comparisons are against a Fighter. The Hit comparison is done against Barbarian because fighters are the outliers on that aspect.

2.) It doesn't account for the third action in many cases which increases turn by turn damage (and which isn't expressly available to a caster for use in the same manner without spending another spell slot on true strike).

False, for non-[Attack] spells, the third round of a caster is to shot a short bow and if you look at the dpr comparisons they do almost the same damage as a cantrip and is hitting at full accuracy.

In fact, they may do more average damage than a Barbarian attacking at -10.
And for [Attack] spells, True Strike is king.

So again your point is null.

3.) It doesn't account for any actual meta of the game or builds that use various feat combinations. The only build on your 'table' using a feat is a double shot ranged combatant. Everything else is just plain strikes. You are missing true strike swipe builds, pick/fatal builds, certain strike, double strike, rouge MCs for sneak attack, fighter MC monk for flurry/certain strike/certain strike, etc. You're comparing 2nd tier martials who didn't spec into damage or necessarily take an optimal turn of 3 action attacks against a caster who has little or no agency to increase the efficacy of their spells.

Simply false.

And you need to present the data yourself if you wish to prove something by saying this.

Remember to fully optimize the Wizard with proper gear for his level, and fully optimize the Barbarian if you want to make this point.

I can say that I did it, and the math scaled properly by Citricking tables and calculations, so i just used his basic tables to show a bigger picture.

The burden of proof that this is wrong is YOURS.

4.) It doesn't account for reactions that cause damage (especially Opportunity Attacks, Champion Reactions, stand still, etc.). These are often another strike and don't suffer MAP. It also doesn't account for additional reactions at higher levels (e.g., fighters get a second AoO, champions get a second reaction, etc.).

True, and also was taking only 1 target for all AOES. =D

AOO vary ALOT by table, so it becomes really hard to model on DPR calculations. You may argue that this brings an advantage to the fighter, but it is still covered by the differences in table of AOE damage, so not a valid point.

Take all adventures by PAIZO, make an average number of AOE'able mobs per combat, and then go to many different streams and watch plays to see the average number of AoO and then you can come here with actual that to prove your point.

With your baseless arguments, I stand where I am.

6.) Doesn't include the critical specialization abilities of various weapons (something you're counting as a boon for spells that strip actions). Three of the weapon specialization effects essentially mimic all of the 'lose an action' spells (i.e., brawling, flail, and hammer groups) and in some cases are better. Note the big difference is most martials gain access at L3 or L5, except you can crit on attacks every turn all day (even on the second strike or on a reaction attack).

Good point, but most of those are even minor than what first level spells can do, and they only happen on a critical strike.

They are good against minions, that wizards are better on AOE, they are nice against normal encounters, and they hardly happen against bosses.

It is hard to model, it is an advantage of weapon uses, and I give you that. I should have touched this on the article, as it is a good argument in pro of Weapon Users.

But it is hard enough to tip the balance lets be clear here.

7.) It isn't evident to me that various damage property runes are included in the damage calculations, which may skew results in favour of martials.

They are.

It doesn't account for ranged penalties, which are most likely to be experienced by spell attack rolls (dropping their already bad spell attack roll further).

And don't take into account the actions lost moving by melee characters. Guess what? We cant model for everything.

Yet we expect ranged characters to sometimes also need to move for a better position, and melees to have to move way more losing more actions during the fight. Even with class feats to mitigate this, they still lose more than ranged characters does because of movement.

In one part of your article you talk about low level spells but even the spells you suggest aren't that great (most of the good ones being L4 spells). You overvalue the 'fail on a save' condition as there is a 70-45% chance of a monster to succeed. Most if not all of those spells boil down to my two actions for the monster's 1 action, which in my opinion isn't actually a good spell effect:

Yes on a successful save. And against a boss encounter 2 of your actions worth way less than 1 action from the enemy.

You need to take into account how the action economy works, a party of four have 12 actions, a boss monsters have 3.

Again your point is not valid, and my argument is backed by the game designers AND by game design theory AND by math.

I will not comment on your spell by spell analysis because they were mostly all flat wrong or just your personal opinion. You forgot that Silence on your fighter means he Grab the enemy caster or that getting away from him takes AoO. You failed to take into consideration the action economy on a lot of spells, like on Hideous Laughter where 1 of party 12 actions can DENY enemy of ALL REACTIONS! Overall not much useful info.

When it comes to your discussion on high level spells you are qualitatively making assumptions that you can consistently get 4+ enemies into an AOE blast. Most of the time you're hard pressed to get 2 things in an AOE blast without a friendly suffering (or without you having to expose get closer). This assumption of 1 spell per combat vs. 4 combatants is a theory craft argument and rarely reflects actual gameplay.

No, I based all on 1 target and said that if we get TWO targets we are great, and three targets we are amazing, and at four or mor targets we are just flat out broken.

You are implying that I said things and presented things that i didn't and that is very aggravating. You should apologize as this is very disrespectful.

This isn't RAW and is subject to heavy table variation. That isn't great for PFS play. I GM that they can ask for what they want but that is my own desire to give PCs more agency and is against RAW.

False, by RAW the DM needs to describe the creatures and how they are acting.

All streams that PAIZO themselves made shows this. All big streamers out there plays this way. You are using a false argument.

The math you pointed to in your article says they have an average of 45-70% save chance. As identified above, the comparison chart you've used is flawed for multiple reasons.

False the math takes into account the half damage.

Again, this isn't true because of the underlying assumptions built into the comparison chart being used. It also doesn't address PCs who don't want to spend all of their top two slots on damage spells (especially spontaneous ones who'll have a harder time retraining out low level blast spells).

AND HERE WE FOUND YOUR PROBLEM!

You just don't like how the game is balanced right now and how is the optimal play for a Spellcaster.

No problem, you can dislike a game because of how the creators wanted the theme and the concepts behind the game to work.

But you can't mix that with a game being technically unbalanced.
You might not like the game, but you can't say something that is not true. Just speak what bothers you about it, what decisions of design you don't like, but don't try to attack others for claiming technical things just because you want some aspects of the game to be different.

Either play a different game or play non-casters if you don't like their current design.

You just hand-waived of another significant nerf/change in the game. The requirement to sustain spells is a big balance chance that makes many of those spells very difficult to use.

Not a "hand-waive" just a technical argument. I suggest you look into the theory of game design to better understand where this argument came from.

A huge biased hand-waive. PCs interact with the world so that they can prepare for things. (...) You would have lost 1-6 spell slots buffing PCs and had no effect with a good chunk of your spells. The only alternative is to be reactive and hope you go first. Even then you cant target multiple PCs without serious heightening, which means you’ll be lucky to even get yourself some resistance before a big red dragon breath weapon.

That is why you scout ahead!

Just let your best stealth guy go, see trap, back, everyone goes that, disarm, he goes, see trolls, back, everyone kil trolls, he goes, see dragon, back, everyone buff up.

This makes spells like invisibility, and divinations even stronger btw.

Overall, the reason I posted all of the nerfs collectively wasn't to rant, but to show the overall cumulative changes between editions. There are a lot of fundamental solid reasons that people think casters are weaker than martials in 2e. It is for many individual reasons, but also the cumulative impact of each of those individual reasons. Your article tries to tackle a subset of those reasons, which is good. However, for me it misses key topics and dismisses others as inconsequential or change for the best. This leads you too concluding that the game is balanced. For me I don't find it as easy to dismiss some of these items individually and especially not taken on the collective whole.

You are wrong on one thing, I never picked arguments to prove my point.

At one point I was under the impression that casters were underpowered.

Then I studied, tried builds, read many sources of info, seen developers and fellow gamers watched streams, DM'ed some times, and then read many posts on this forum, then I placed all solid info I could find, presented it in an article, and my personal opinion was different by that point, as all data I could find pointed for a balanced gameplay.

Look at all that you posted, you gave no proofs, no data, no hard work. You only claim things, discredit data without showing math proving the contrary, and you act in a disrespectful manner while doing that.

I ask you, what is your contribution to the community here?

Besides trying to deny something just because you don't want it to be true because you don't like how Paizo designed the spell casters mechanically, what you did here of useful?

I again apologize for being somewhat harsh here, but it is hard to not feel attacked when words are placed in your mouth and you are accused of manipulating data. (Even more, when all data presented was the entirety of data that exist at the moment about the object of study, and are all referenced.)

If anything sounded personal or offensive, please excuse me for that, sincerely, it is really not my objective, as I very much enjoy discussion and even heated debates, as I see them as the best way to improve on any given subject of study. ( This is sciency my friends, it only grows as people present data and arguments and others try to attack it, and rounds of discussing arise. =D )

But since some of your commentaries were pretty offensive and borderline trolling at some points, I will refrain from answering if the tone does not change to a more peaceful construction of knowledge on the topic.

If we as a community reach new conclusions, if new data arises with good conformability, then for sure I will either change my old article or create a new one talking about the new discoveries.

But I did all with proper research and the data we have so far.

Also, I'm sorry, but I'm not really inclined to go read anything on a site that I can't even read without disabling adblock.

Sorry for that man, but it takes many, and I mean MANY, hours to put up a good article.

I cannot do that, and pay all site costs without help from ads. =(

We can still discuss it here anyway.

Playing a Wizard I've found you'd better hope your DM rolls bad on saves and does not fudge crit fails (IME alot of DMs do this)

If your DM is cheating you, change DM.

I can confirm you can't assume 4 foes in a fireball in the 'real world', all too often it's just 1. You usually don't know what you will face when memorizing that morning, and the tactical layout of terrain/cover & friendlies. I'd say my average is at best 3 foes/FB.

The math here shows that even in single target situations casters will not fall behind in average damage.

The math i did for AOE was for two targets not four, and Mellored did for 3 targets, by his numbers a barbarian and a Wizard would be tied for 2 targets more or less.

Wizard is good at mook-cleanup, which from a team perspective means the Wizard is very useful to the team if the DM uses mooks a lot (some prefer 'one big monster'); but mook-handling is not the most appealing role IMO.

False. Wizards are the king of mook-cleaup, and as good as the other classes against 2-3 enemies.

And they are descent against bosses both on damage department and on debuff/buff department. They may not be the best there, but they provide a lot of utility, are still very useful and bring competitive average damage, and they are better on non-boss combats, and they totally dominate AOE scenarios, so it seems a fair and balanced. Or you wanted them to be king on AoE/Mook-Cleaning, good against normal encounters, and top damage on boss fights too?!

I worry about how this wizard will do in marathon sessions - they (IMO) roughly keep up in the 3-4 encounter/day model, how will they do in marathons? Cantrips are fine but boring and weak. I've been lucky so far usually only facing 1 final encounter with just cantrips left, but yeah it's abundantly clear how weak cantrips are in those fights and super boring for me personally.

Cantrips are not good, as proved by citriking, they worth half-damage of an Archer.

The thing is, there is no more 3-4 encounter/day model as shown in the article by Paizo developer's own words.

So it is up for the kind of game you are playing.

If you DM uses 1-3 encounters per day casters become even stronger.
If he uses 3-5 encounters per day, they are as balanced as we are showing here.
If he uses 6-7 encounters they are ok but will need to take care with resources.
If he uses 8+ encounters, then casters fall behind.

That is called game balance and choices, you gain on one side, you lose on the other. Remove the consequences of choice and they become meaningless.

Assuming 4 rounds * 3 encounters per day....

Dragon Barbarian 13, using swipe with a Guisarme to help normalize multi-target damage.
Using the chart, 50% chance to hit, 10% chance to crit.
(.5 + .1*2) = 0.7
3d10+5+3(specialization)+8(dragon rage) =
32.5 * 0.7 = 22.75 (2 targets)

Level 13 arcane caster using a level 7/6/5/4 multi-target spell. Which they can do 3 times per day (likely hitting more than 2 targets).
Eclipse Burst (7th, 8d10+8d4) + Chain Lighting (6th, 8d12) + Cone of Cold (5th, 12d6) + Fireball (4th, 8d6)
(64+52+42+28)*.25 = 46.5
45% chance to hit, 45% chance for half, 5% chance for double, 5% none.
(.45 + .45 * .5 + .05 * 2) = 0.775
46.5 * 0.775 = 36.0375 (2+ targets)

So yea. Blaster does 58.4% more damage than a barb. And still has the level 3/2/1 spells for utility. Casters easily win.

Let's try 5 round * 3 encounters (15 rounds of combat) a day.
So if I assume 1 cast of electric arc (7d4+5).
(64+52+42+28+22.5)*.20 = 41.7 * 0.775
= 32.317

So at 15 rounds a day, blasters still win with 42% more damage.

S2 Mellored. =D

I was busy fighting with problems on WIX on Mobile so I ended not doing the math here, but your post is a good example of what I was talking about.

If you take AOE into account Casters are still pretty scary.

I can't access your article with adblock activated.

Is there anything interesting/unexpected in the article? Or does it only explain that wisards are as impactful as a fighter 3 rounds/day?

It depends on your opinion.

It shows that mathematically casters and martials are much better balanced than some people that screams that the sky is falling.

Michael Alves wrote:

ONE AOE spell against 4 targets will do more damage them the fighter will do on the entire rest of the combat.

One level 5 Fireball 6d6 vs 4 enemies, two making their saves, two will not is dealing about 18d6 or 63 damage as an average.

A fighter using a decent +1 striking weapon (d8, d10, d12) will deal in between 2d8+4 to 2d12+4 damage per single attack (13 to 17 damage per hit), so it takes only 4 to 5 successful hits to deal that 63+ damage, which seems more than managable even if the average combat only lasts about 4 rounds.

I give you that the mage dealt a lot of frontloaded damage in only two actions, but any reasonabily build fighter should easily be able to keep up over time. However in contrast to the mage he will be able to do so be it the 1st, 10th or 100th battle this very day just by continuing to turn that circular saw that is attached to his arm.

Note that I am not saying mages are OP/UP, I haven't played enough so far to make such a statement, however I found your example a little off.

Please, do proper math.

Take into account success and failure chances for each target for the fireball, and miss chance of each fighter attack against AC, and the average length of fights in PF2E.

You make a fighter with 100% hit accuracy and a wizard that had all two saves being successful and then claimed I was wrong?

(Oh, and add cantrips to the other 3 wizard rounds, that was the context of the claim if you read the article and the entire topic.)

1. Per your cited values, monsters have a 70% chance to succeed (strong save), 60% chance to succeed (mid save), and 45% chance to succeed (weak save). This makes critically failing a save almost non-existent (only on a natural 1 in most cases). This only gets worse for a boss battle due to non-linear treadmill scaling where you absolutely shouldn't waste your real spells on them unless you want to get shut down.

Yes, but the damage tables already take hit chance into account.

3. There aren't many true trike worthy attack roll spells in the game right now, so it doesn't make up for accuracy via proficiency issues.

Not true, there is great single target damage and/or debuff spells. Polar Ray for an example or even Disintegrate.

4. Without metagaming you can't know the monster's weakest save via the recall knowledge action based on RAW. Even if your wizards thesis was "Battle Acumen and the Magical Application of and Common Golarion Hostile Creatures" it still falls under the purview of your GM to be nice enough to give you the information you want.

False. Look at the creature, does it appears to be agile in its movements? Is it very intelligent or is it casting spells? Does it looks very strong and tough?

This is claimed by some people but makes absolutely no sense. Your character is there, it is looking at how the enemy moves, what he does, and everything else.

If your DM refuses to give you information you would obtain by looking at the creature in front of you, then he is the metagaming one and not you, change DM/Table.

6. Blasting spell mechanics suffer the same issue. The math points out that lots of creatures will make their save so alot of basic save blasting will feel under powered.

False, the damage on the tables are already taking saving throws into consideration.

7. That make buffing a reactive once per combat vs. 1 per dungeon spell. It punishes players who interact with the world by giving them very few options to work with to make that interaction meaningful and significantly increases the likeliehood of a wasted spell slot if used proactively vs. reactively once combat starts.

That was both overpowered on prior editions, and was in favor of martials and not casters, so what is your point?

And what it has to do with world interaction?

8. Caster chassis are much weaker off compared to martials/fighter. They generally get a TEML of: MME in saves and a E in unarmored, E in perception. They also have 6 or 8 hp/level vs. 10 or 12.

Better chassis then prior editions.

9. Auto-scaling cantrips are not doing as much damage as people think they are. They don't make up for weaker spells that monsters are likely to save on. The damage is really low when you start looking at people's martials full turns (which often don't include AoOs to bump their damage up).

Did you read the article or you just seen the name of the topic and come here to rant? =(

10. Spells cost 2-3 actions vs. 1 action. This amounts to most martial feats equating to big action economy boosters (e.g., sudden charge a L1 feat is all day haste) or significant MAP reductions (e.g., swipe is a two strikes for 1).

Again all taken into account in the dpr calculations. Wizards are still doing well with top two higher slots.

11. A lot of spells have the minion or similair trait applied, making them hard to use and reducing what casters can do without a L14-16 feat. Imagine a cleric who wants to cast spiritual weapon AND do a 3 action heal to channel. They can't and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me without quickened channel.

It is called choices, and is what makes interesting gameplay.

12. Invisibility and similar spells are heavily negated by the definition of a "hostile action" being direct/indirect. It'll be pretty hard to argue that using the inspire courage cantrip isn't indirectly hostile so casters can't go invisible and help buff up parties without causing direct damage. Expect great and wide table variations here.

It is pretty clear. Hostile action is an action that causes harm to the target. Cutting the ropes of a bridge to cause them to fall is hostile, stabbing them with a knife is hostile, healing your ally or casting a haste spell is not.

If your table disagree, and you feel it is unfair, change table and DM. The rules are pretty clear on that, and they are making up things.

13. Various utility spells have been gutted via duration, higher level slots, or actual effect. For example all flying type spells are L4 and 5 minute in duration. Good luck trying to actually fly somewhere. This is true for a lot of different common spells in various ways.

Great change. Have you ever read Elminster books? He mostly uses foot or horse to traverse distances, or teleportation when very necessary, but he does not go around flying to places like a Dragon Ball character.

It is cool that a flying focused character can fly and bring his group with him to cross greate distances.
It is strange that every wizard could do the same. The skies would be crowded on some of Toril areas.

14. Spell slots have been reduced (25-40% less per level).

This proves that you had not read the article.

It only reaches 33%-40% if on PF1 you had broken values in your main ability score. (most probably because of house rules)

The biggest impact spells out there right now are buffs/heals to the fighter (i.e., magic weapon, inspire courage, haste, etc.). Every other spell has a huge failure chance due to increased saves or poor proficiency on spell attack rolls. If you want to play a standard controller/blaster, I see a very swingy/love hate play experience ahead. You'll have very little control over your efficacy in the system (beyond a starting 18) and can only hope that the scenario or GM lines up an AOE effect that you can exploit before your front line is in the way.

ONE AOE spell against 4 targets will do more damage them the fighter will do on the entire rest of the combat.

If your group does not know or want to position themselves to allow for your AOE to works, them your wizard should call them in-game for doing things that may risk everyone's life.

If your group does not want to be tactically efficient, change tables, or blast them with the monsters, if that is your thing.

You are pulling data from nothing, citing no source, and saying that many agree with your opinion based on... your opinion. When numbers show otherwise.

There article made for some good reading, thank you!

I want to note that I had an issue reading on mobile (Android's Chrome). When I got to the hit bonus chart, I had a black bar on the right side of the screen, covering text. Then further down it covered the whole page. Trying to get around it eventually too me to another page, so it seems to have been an ad. Loading the desktop page worked just fine.

Don't know if I'm the only one, but I know you likely never hear about it if no one speaks up, so...

Tried on my android, same is happening.

I tried to remove everything at the end of the posts on WIX and nothing is working to fix this.

Anyone is proficient on WIX and can help me? =(

Guide for using expected damage comparison grapher

I made a guide for my tool for comparing expected damage of different attack routines. You can compare against different AC targets for levels 1 to 20, or against different ACs for a set level.

Here's a link to the tool
The guide linked above can explain how to use it.

Thread here

This might be helpful, it doesn't have spells vs saves yet, but you can at least compare with some cantrips that target AC

Great news!

Does this new tool changed anything that was already on the tables and graphs? (If so please let me know so I can improve the article accordingly.)

For future reference, I will be using your tool.
Thank you again for the time invested.

I can see the idea now. It's just that the paths in pf2 always were so meaningful. I mean fighters and monks are the only ones that lack one and they both compensate by being overall a bit less locked.

But I don't feel like the warlock is quite a bit free to invest with the rest of the feats. Might be just me though.
I just feel like instead of "DARK PATH" just grant a feat if that's the only thing. A path should be meaningful IMO.

I understand your point!

The idea was to be closer to the fighter like you pointed.
Do you believe this version of the class is not allowing the same freedom fighter and monks has?

Can you point me some examples of how fighter does this better?
If this is lacking I will surely try to fix it because it was one of the design concepts behind the game design of this class, I did not wish to create "locked paths" but enable players to pick the abilities they most desire. (With few exceptions and "trees" of requisites, but I was on the impression that they were not more common than on fighter or monk, but I might be wrong here.)

Thank you again. =D

I think you have to level that effects Incapacitation spells as one too low here.

Targets treat their success one better if they are higher level than 2 times spell level. So for a lvl 5 wizard casting a 3rd level spell, the target has to be lvl 7 (2 above the wizard) to change the outcome of those spells. A lvl6 wizard affects equal level targets normally with 3rd level spells.

True, it was pretty late, and I was working on writing articles for like 14 hours by that time. Sorry for this obvious mistake.

It always affect your level+1 on odd levels, and your level+0 on even levels.

Still, most "boss" enemies are Level+2 or Level+3 so the point stands.
Yet I agree that they are not useless, just situational.

Most of the time, a big blast spell that hits boss + minions is better than a crowd control that has no effect on boss. But it is not set in stone and depends heavily on many factors, so you are right.

...

No.

You are contributing way more by casting your spells on it than running away. You are thinking with a 5e/3.5e mentality, where spells miss effect are not impactful.

A real combat against a Level+3 enemy will still net you good chances of hitting with save spells because of buffs. And even when the enemy succeeds they will still take the miss effect.

It would NOT be better to waste your actions running away, as you would be contributing zero. I am very sure treantmonk would not suggest it for spell casters on PF2E against bosses.

As I said, what matters is the normalized DPR and not the actual "hit chances" and on a normalized DPR wizard, top slot spells are better than a fighter using actions to attack.

It's a good read and analysis.

There is one thing that bothers me, though. I think you're underrating the importance of high level spell slots.

You completely fail to mention the Incapactation trait on many of the best debuff/disable spells. That first level Color Spray won't do much against level 3+ enemies. They treat their save as one degree better, so even on a failed save, they are only dazzled for a round. And on a success, they are unaffected.

Similarly, some of the spells you list as examples for useful low-level spells are actually relatively weak when not heightened to a high level spell slot.

A 4th level Globe of Invulnerability isn't going to do much against a 12th level caster since it has an extremely low chance to block anything higher than 4th level. And even 3rd and 4th level spells have roughly a 50% chance to get through.

Freedom of Movement also only allows automatic escape against effects that are no higher than its level. A 4th level FoM isn't going to help you against Black Tentacles or more powerful spells.

Now there's still plenty of good spells for the lower level slots, so it doesn't change your conclusiong much. But those top level spell slots might be a bit more valuable and important than your article implies.

Just finished making an update about incapacitation spells.

Freedom of movement is not good only against spells, give it another read.

The Globe of Invulnerability is still good because enemies will also use low slot spells. =D

Like you said, there is many other low-level spells to pick, I updated the list a little, but I never treated it as a consolidated list, just as few examples.

I forgot to look for the incapacitation trait when I was making the list so it was incorrect as you pointed. I fixed it.

First thing, you should give something besides an feat level 1 with the DARK PATH maybe a small benefit/medium benefit. I mean there's no difference between taking Unhollower and Leeching Curse and Hexer and Profane Empowerment, in this case i would rather not get a level 1 feat and get the path with some cool benefits along the way.

Also maybe is just me but i feel as if he should get LEGENDARY WARLOCK only on a path and instead change proficiencies based on a DARK path?
One should probably get legendary on will saves, the other i am not sure...

The idea is that you must start with 1 of three feats "Dark Empowerment", "Leeching Curse" or "Call Demonic Servant", and your free level 1 talent can be any of the five initial talents.

This way you are free to build your warlock the way you want. You can be "pet + curses" or "curses + bolt" or "full-on curses" or "full-on bolt".

Creating unique benefits would make you "locked" into a build as soon as you made the initial choice. I tried to give more options, by letting you build your own warlock using the many different blocks.

Yet if you want you can build a straight "pet build" or "curse build" or "bolt build" by going after all talents that complement each of those styles.

At each level there is at least 1 talent that was made for each of the 3 different builds, so you can be a pure Hexer or a pure Uhollower, but you can also be your own kind of warlock.

I felt that by giving a unique feature I would remove choices.

On the other hand, I understand that sometimes interesting choices of game design are made by creating restrictions. So I will think about that.

About different proficiencies, no other class do that, I think it would confuse players. I would only do that if it was very necessary to class fantasy or to game mechanic, and here is not exactly the case for that.

What you think about my answers?

Why you feel that the Dark Paths must give more unique features? I am very interested in why you felt like that. If you can give me more info I will be very grateful.

The game design process is always a process of playtesting and improving, so you can count on my work to further improve and make it reach a quality that honors the amazing work that the Paizo Designers did for PF2E.

Thanks for the credit, but credit vi isn't me, that was someone else, my success rate charts are here

Fixed it!

I must have messed up while checking the different links to build the references. Sorry about that.

Your work was amazing with the data, and I thank you again. If you find anything wrong on the article please let me know.

...

I point in the article that 2d6/spell-level spells are lower then what casters can actually do.

I also point that the table is already taking into account the lower hit chance of casters.

That is why I included a table against Player Level+2 Enemy. It shows that even when taking all that loss of hit chance into account, the damage of the spells when they actually hit is so big that, plus the fact that it does half damage on a successful save it, compensates for all the lower chance of hitting.

Don't worry the game is well balanced, as the article suggests.

When I suggested 7 encounters per day I did it showing a WORST CASE SCENARIO, showing that even in those cases casters were still good.

You are underestimating the lower level spells. Like I said in the article even level 1 debuffing spells can be crippling for enemies, and you will have plenty of those at higher levels. (7+?)

Read the article again with a bit more patience, you will see that I make arguments both in favor and against casters, I was not being biased, and my conclusion was more technical them wishful thinking or just good "flavourful" words.

The sky is not falling, to speak the truth I was abit skeptical and feeling that casters might be a bit underpowered before I started doing proper research, and I am 100% convinced that they are still better then Martils in practice to speak the truth, since all calculations point that they are as efficient as martials on single target, having more nova damage potential, but being weaker if facing too much encounters or too long encounters, but this all is ignoring the fact that on 3+ targets they blow away the competition without even trying.

So martial classes are now finally viable, and casters are still on a pretty good spot IMO.

Seems like the cantrip damage should be rated 3.5+mod. Not 2.5.

All the d4 cantrips come with additional stuff. Like slow -10, enfeebled 1, or 2 targets with half damage on a "miss".
The pure damage ones do more.

Lets see:

Acid Splash: 1d6 acid damage plus 1 splash acid damage. (No ability to damage) Extra effect only on critical. (1 persistent acid damage.)

Divine Lance: Pure 1d4+attribute. No effect on crit.

Electric Arc: The outlier and best cantrip. 1d4+attribute, basic reflex, so half-damage on target saving. But no extra effects on crit. The best cantrip because it targets 2 targets. (But remember the damage comparisons on the article are not taking into account that 2d6/spell-level of wizard spells are all AOE too.)

Produce Flame: 1d4+attribute, on crit it does extra 1d4 persistent fire damage.

Ray of Frost: 1d4+attribute, on crit it reduces the target movement speed by 10-foot for 1 round.

Telekinetic Projectile: 1d6+attribute, no extra effects.

The only two outliers are Telekinetic Projectile that is d6 instead of d4, and Electric Arc that can target 2 creatures.

The effects of the other cantrips only happen on a crit and are mostly irrelevant.

But I agree with you that the math could take into account 3.5+mod not 2.5+mod, as Telekinetic Projectile can be used as a baseline.

Michael. I am quite a bit surprised by your ideas, as a fellow brasilian(I think i heard somewhere you where one but not 100% sure) i hope you keep going steady ^^

Also if you keep going forward with the warlock class i hope you can create a homebrew product or start a 3pp. Since pf2 3pp/homebrew scenary is still fresh and empty.

Yes, i am a Brazilian Game Designer, i co-founded Arcano Games, and i do game development works for Meeple Br Jogos. =D

I want to create good quality content for Pf2 as a 3pp, let's see if people will be interested.

Interesting enough the usual Cantrips (1d4 + modifier) only surpass a spell like Fireball when the Caster is lvl 13 and have access to 7th level spells.

Nice article, I think that will take some time before the veterans get used to the new caster playstyle.

Yep, exactly that!

That is why i felt that this article could contribute to the general consensus of how things are balanced on PF2E.

Hope people like it.

Hi everyone, I just finished today a new article based on research I did on all discussions and data I could find on the question of PF2E game balance between casters and martial characters.

I'd like to thank the user Citricking for the amazing amount of data that he gathered and made public, without which it would not be possible to finish this article in a timely manner.

Link to the Article:
PF2E - Casters Vs Martials: The Sage Answer
https://www.thegamersage.com/post/pf2e-casters-vs-martials-the-sage-answer

Critiques and suggestions will be appreciated.
I will update the article if the discussion here provides more accurate information in any aspect.

___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ _____________________

And if anyone is interested, I have two other articles for PF2E:

Warlock Class - Compatible with PF2E (Not based on 3.5, 4e or 5e warlock, different concept)
https://www.thegamersage.com/post/warlock-class-pf2e-compatible

PF2E Game Design focused Review.
Pathfinder 2E RPG: Elegant and full of choices.
https://www.thegamersage.com/post/the-gamer-sage-review-pathfinder-2e-rpg-e legant-and-full-of-choices

Thank you all.

I made some small updates to the class.

Still looking for more opinions on improvements. =D

Great. I will have a look on that

Critiques and suggestions on improvements are welcome. =D